Sock Love

Meet Denise!  Owner of Karori Flower Shop, knitter of naturals (see last post!), sheep farmer and sock ninja.

Denise makes potentially the most perfect socks in the world, and sells them in the shop.  Of course, they fly out the door faster than she can knit them, which means that she rarely has anything else on the needles!

At Karori Flower Shop we sell Opal sock yarn, a self-patterning yarn which is a lot of fun to knit with!  Ashford, suppliers of this German yarn have just recently released the 2011 Street Art Collection, the latest range with fantastic colours, great not only for socks but also jumpers and hats. 

And of course, it was Denise’s duty to knit some socks from some of this new wool, to show our knitter customers what it looks like!

The Opal surprise (above) is the best of the new range and wouldn’t it look stunning in a little jersey?  Or a dress?  And as it is machine washable, it is easy to care for when giving items as a gift to busy mums!  This colourway sold out in New Zealand in record time but we still have four balls on our shelves, retailing for $20.50 each.  The rest of the range retails at $19.50- $20.50.

Opal is one of the most fun sock yarn to work with, and if you are interested in having a try yourself, please check out the Ashford website here and feel free to e-mail us with any queries and orders!

Also, if you are not a knitter and would like to purchase any of the socks and hats we have in store, please contact us at karoriflowershop@gmail.com … our whole family will tell you how excellent these socks are, and after years of wear, still have no holes!

Have a lovely week,

from the Best Family

Knitting with Naturals

We are a family of avid knitters and one of the things we love to sell in the shop other than flowers and wool are our hand knitted baby socks, hats and the occasional piece of clothing!  Each knitter has her own unique style and we will introduce you to them one by one! Today we are focussing on the Matriarch of the Best Family, not only is she an amazing spinner, knitter, crocheter, horse rider and cyclist (and florist of course!) she is also a Sock Ninja and we will be showing you her socks, so perfect they are almost unreal in our next post!

The matriarch likes to knit with natural wool only, and creates incredibly cute little baby gear such as:

This little vest is knitted in Natural Medium 043- all wool and Ashford products can be viewed at the Ashford website, to view Tekapo specifically, click here!

The Harvey Kimono below is knitted in Natural Light 042 and required approximately 200gms.  

 All little cardigans and vests need a little hat to match, and this lovely little hat was knitted in the round, using Natural Medium 043 and Natural Dark 044.

Our little knits are very popular here in Karori and we love the fact that people are giving others handmade gifts, made with love in New Zealand.  If you are a maker of things yourself and like our wool, please feel free to browse the Ashford website and order anything through the shop.

Later on in the week we’ll be showing you the socks!  So don’t forget to pop back in!

From the Best Family

Showcasing our bouquets!

This week would like to showcase some more of our beautiful bouquets!  As we have said before, we are very fussy about the quality of the bouquets we send out to people, and ensure that ours are of the highest standard.  Because of this, we have a positive reputation and get a lot of positive feedback from people not just in New Zealand, but also their families overseas who order through networks we belong to!

So what is important to us when making a bouquet?

1.  Lovely fresh flowers that haven’t completely opened.  This way, our lovely recipients get the longest life possible from their gift.

2.  Beautifully arranged bouquets…. flower arranging is surprisingly harder than it looks!  Both of our florists continue training and learning the art of floristry and the secrets behind creating an unsuspecting “bunch of flowers!” 

3.  The finishing touches…. We lovingly wrap our bouquets and with each sale provide flower food to put in the vase to prolong the life of the flowers.  We always make sure we put water in the bottom of the wrapping when someone comes in to buy a bouquet they are going to give later that day so the flowers don’t wilt even a tiny little bit!  And we go the extra mile by telling these people not to hide the flowers behind their backs when giving them so the water doesn’t piddle out onto the floor behind them…. (not a romantic look!)

Thank you for stopping in today!  Have a beautiful day!

From the Best family

Cup of flora?

Hello!  Summer seems to have truly disappeared at the end of this week, but lucky for us, we have beautiful blooms brightening our days!

This week we wanted to show one of our latest creations, the cup of flowers!  As we are located by a cemetary, we sell lots of ditties for people to leave on the graves of their loved ones.  We are keen on caring for the environment and strive to make any offerings as eco-friendly as possible, which we will talk about in another post at more length.  The other day we decided to make these ditties a bit more fancy and instead of wrapping them in paper, popped them into a cup and saucer!

These are currently retailing at $25 NZD excluding delivery and are selling faster than you can make a cup of tea!  Not only do they make lovely ditties, they are a great way of sending something special to someone special and ensuring they have a little gift left after the flowers die away.

 We’d love to hear what you think of our latest works of floral art!

Wishing you a lovely week!  We’ll be back next week with some good old fashioned romance, another gorgeous bride… here’s a sneaky peek of her bouquet to be!

Keep warm!  From the Best Family

Summer Flower Love

Hello and thank you for stopping by!

This week we would like to showcase some of our beautiful bouquets!  We love making beautiful and colourful bouquets and regularly receive e-mails and phone calls from grateful recipients…. we’re not sure what our trick is, but we go to the flower markets regularly to handpick our flowers, and only ever send the freshest, most perfect blooms to our customers, so that they get maximum life from their bouquet.

As well as being beautiful and fresh, our bouquets are affordable, depending of course on types and amounts of flowers. 

We love our bouquets, and create colour themes and gender specific bouquets as well!  Our gentleman’s bouquet is a big seller around Karori.

That one is obviously not the gentleman’s bouquet!  But don’t those luscious pink blooms make you feel all sweet and happy inside?

As it is the end of summer here in New Zealand, there are a lot of weddings happening, and what an amazing time to have them, the weather has been perfection lately….

Lucky for us, we’re getting the opportunity to create more bridal flowers most weekends, and next week will have more to show you!

But before we go, do you remember how last post we mentioned blue gentian, and how it was the only true blue flower?  We snapped a shot of it this week….

And isn’t it amazing…. the kind of flower faeries live in for sure….

Have a wonderful week!

From the best Family

From Red Roses to Bridal Bouquets!

How many people in the world have been married on Valentine’s Day?  Being the most romantic day of the year, it’s not surprising that this date is one of the most popular days to pledge vows, and this year we were busy getting some beautiful flowers ready for another gorgeous bride!

This bouquet is stunning if we do say so ourselves!  Every bride has a different vision for her wedding and it is such an exciting feeling when they pick up the finished product, especially when we have created just what they wanted.  This particular bride wanted orange, apricot and white flowers, so we created a mix of roses, calla lilies, hypericum, soladego, celosia and lisianthus.  For the greenery we used camelia and flax.

On pick up she was absolutely delighted (Phew!) and even asked us to make a special little one to throw as she didn’t want to throw this one to the flocks of single women!

We wonder if she found the little orange butterfly which we hid in the greenery for her?

One happy bride = two happy florists.

Valentine’s Eve

Hello and Happy Valentine’s Eve!  We are having a great week preparing for the year’s most romantic and floral day and are set to be rushed off our feet tomorrow!

Traditionally, a dozen red roses are the way to tell your beloved that you care, so we have been stocking up and making special orders to ensure our wonderful customers get the exact bouquet they have in mind.

Times are changing however, as is the economy and societal values, and we’d love to  hear how you all feel about Valentine’s Day, what does it mean to you?  In what ways do you show your loved one you care, and how do you know they care for you?

And one last question, what do you give a florist for Valentine’s Day?!

Wishing you a wonderful day tomorrow, whether you are part of a couple or on your own, we hope you feel the love!

From the Best Family

Valentine Preparation!

It’s the end of week three and things are heating up for us here as Valentine’s Day approaches!  But first, let us show you the latest arrival from Ashford…  the much anticipated Opal sock yarn in the latest colourways!  We ordered this last year and have been so excited about it’s arrival…

As we are avid knitters in our family, we knit our Ashford and Opal wool into bably clothes to sell in the shop, and literally the afternoon the new colour arrived, a pair of socks were on the needles!

 

This pair of newborn socks took 18g so it pretty economic we will be able to make 5 pairs from 1 x 100g ball.  Aren’t they just stunning?  Next week, no doubt we’ll have more pictures of new socks started from a different spot in the ball.
 
Valentines Day is not so far away, and we’re experimenting with gorgeous red bouquets!

Valentines Day is such a fun day in a florists life, it doesn’t get much busier… other than Mother’s Day of course!  Customers are already phoning for prices of roses and delivery costs… we have our range of fun teddies as well, for those who like to go the extra mile with something cute and cuddly!

And for those with a little more imagination, we have write-on calico teddies!

And the coolest dragon we’ve ever seen!

 Being creative types, we’re practicing ways to add an artistic touch to our work, and have been practicing making silver wire hearts to add to our bouquets…. we’ll let you in on that secret next week!

 And on a final note, we got our first bunches of blue genetian – the only true blue flowers!

See you next week!

From the Best Family

Week Two :: Ashford Appreciation

Hello and thank you for stopping by!

As you can see, lillies are flourishing right now!  The beautiful photo above shows one of the many in our garden at home, they are huge this year, possibly world record sized lillies, and with such magnificent colours!  We’ve got plenty in the shp as well, to share the lily goodness around!

Our window was fixed finally!  After one week, four (FOUR!) men changed the pane of glass today, so we quickly snapped a shot of our brand new shiny window, so we can finally, in the third post, introduce you to our lovely shop!

Our new stock this week was from one of our favourite suppliers…. Ashford!  We love wool as much as we love flowers so these boxes are particularly fun to open.

As Ashford agents, we can order anything our customers desire!  The Ashford website is HERE for your enjoyment!  The main type of Ashford wool we stock is Tekapo, a strong DK wool which is lovely for knitting, felting or crochet…

Oh and a stunning palatte of colours to choose from too!  Ashford creates beautiful colourways, but also have four different shades of natural undyed wool in the DK range….

Our prices are looooooooooooooow and we are happy to ship anywhere in the world!  If you would like to order any Ashford products, please have a look on their website and e-mail us at deniseatkaroriflowershop@gmail.com for overseas shipping prices or any extra information!

We’ll be back next week with some Valentine’s Day preparations and some more beautiful flowers, wishing you a lovely week,

From the Best Family

Week One- Off to a smashing start!

Hello!!!

It’s the end of week one, after three glorious weeks off, we re-opened the shop on the 17th of Janurary.  Going back to work after Summer holidays is always a shock to the system, but lucky for us, being surrounded by beautiful blooms makes the transition back into the working week so much easier!

We closed the shop on the 24th of December, and as it was so busy we had no idea how low on stock we were!  This is easily remedied, we’ve been having so much fun ordering new stock for the new year, and it’s being delivered bit by bit every day by our lovely postie…. Two of our favourites so far are this…..

And this…..

We’ve got heaps more coming in and can’t wait to get the shop bursting full of lovely things!

And as for being off to a smashing start… our first Friday morning began with this discovery…

So as you can imagine, we had a busy day of cleaning up!

We need to get our creative groove happening again, as business is starting up all over town after Summer, so we have our Monday morning deliveries to start up again!  Looking forward to showing you what we get up to for our corporates and showing you some of our tips!

Have a wonderful week,

from the Best Family